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Jefferson Adams

Jefferson Adams is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. His poems, essays and photographs have appeared in Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, CALIBAN, Hayden's Ferry Review, Huffington Post, the Mississippi Review, and Slate among others.

He is a member of both the National Writers Union, the International Federation of Journalists, and covers San Francisco Health News for Examiner.com.

Celiac.com 08/03/2015 - Patients with type 1 diabetes who have celiac disease face in increased risk for retinopathy and nephropathy. A team of researchers recently set out to investigate whether celiac disease associated with type 1 diabetes increases the risk of microvascular complications.

They are variously affiliated with the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Saarland University Medical Center, Homburg/Saar, Germany,the Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, St. Vincenz Hospital, Paderborn, Germany, the Department of Pediatrics, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany, the Department of General Pediatrics and Neonatology, Children's Hospital, University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany, the Department of Pediatrics, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria, the Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry, ZIBMT, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany, the Center for Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Bremen-Mitte Hospital, Bremen, Germany, the University of Tübingen Children's Hospital, Tübingen, Germany, the Department of Pediatrics, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetology, Department of Pediatrics II, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany, and with the Pediatric Endocrinology Division of the Children's Hospital at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany.

Their team conducted a multi-center longitudinal analysis of 56,514 patients from the German-Austrian DPV database. Patients were over 10 years of age, with diabetes for less than 20 years from 392 centers in Germany and Austria.

The team combined the confirmed and suspected groups, and analyzed them for retinopathy or nephropathy. The team used Cox proportional hazards regression to adjust for potential confounders, such as glycated hemoglobin [HbA1c], age at diabetes onset, sex, smoking, dyslipidemia, and hypertension.

The team found retinopathy at age 26.7 years (95% CI 23.7-30.2) in 25% of patients with celiac disease vs. age 33.7 years (33.2-34.4) in 25% without celiac disease. They also found micro-albuminuria at age 32.8 years (29.7-42.5) vs. 42.4 years (41.4-43.3).

Cox regression showed that celiac disease is an independent risk factor for microvascular complications after adjustment for confounders.

Patients with type 1 diabetes who have celiac disease face in increased risk for retinopathy and nephropathy, and the team recommends regular serologic celiac disease testing for type 1 patients, even in the absence of clinical celiac disease.

Additional prospective studies are needed to determine whether a gluten-free diet might lower the risk of microvascular disorders in patients with both diabetes and celiac disease.

3 Responses:

Gotta love when people focus on spreading awareness and information about Diabetes. I was diagnosed with Type 2 one year ago, and spent the first few months relying on Metformin and doctor instructions to try and deal with it. After seeing no results with Metformin and still having a blood glucose level of 140, I turned to natural methods like diet/exercise to try and get my life together. Now, months later, I've dropped 30 pounds and have a fasted blood sugar level of 70-80.

I feel I need to say this, just use common sense people, research for yourself, don't believe just anything you may hear, if it's confusing leave it alone for awhile and go back with an open mind, you know what "they" say if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is!